“Forward up twenty, aft down five!” The Chief.
The column of water in the Papenberg is already slowly sinking. The Chief bends to one side, tilts his head back, and reports to the tower, “Periscope cleared!”
Every up or down movement of the column of water in the Papenberg means a rise or fall of the boat. The hydroplane operators have to try through expertly timed setting of the planes to counteract a rise or fall before these motions show in the Papenberg, for then it is too late: either the periscope has risen too high out of the water, betraying the boat to the enemy in case of attack, or it has plunged beneath the surface so that the Commander sees nothing at all at the decisive moment.
The Chief has not once taken his eyes off the Papenberg. Neither have the two hydroplane operators. It barely rises or falls. Total silence in the boat, only an occasional low humming from the periscope motor.
“Bridge watch stand by! Oilskins on!” The voice of the Commander from the tower.
The bridge lookouts tie their sou’-westers under their chins and put on their oilskin jackets, then form in a group under the tower hatch.
“Prepare to surface!”
Aft, the stokers now pump oil so that the diesels can start immediately.
“Surface!”
The Chief has the forward hydroplane turned up full and the aft up five degrees. He orders the tanks blown.
With a sharp hissing sound the compressed air streams in.
“Equalize pressure!”
Suddenly there is a pain in my ears; the excess pressure has been reduced. A stream of fresh air bursts into the boat from above: the tower hatch is open. The ventilators are turned on and draw a mighty draft into the boat.
There follows a series of orders for the engines.
“Port diesel ready!”
“Port E-motor stop! Change gears!”
“Port engine slow forward!”
The trim cells are flooded again. After that the Commander orders, “Blow tanks with the diesels!”
The diesel exhaust gases now force the water out of the buoyancy cells. This saves compressed air. And the procedure has another advantage: the oily exhaust gases help prevent corrosion.
One buoyancy cell after the other is blown out. From the bridge the Commander can tell by the air bubbles that rise along the sides of the boat whether the buoyancy cells have been properly cleared. After a while he calls down, “All blown. Dismiss from diving stations!”
The boat is a surface vessel again.
The Commander orders, “Starboard diesel stand by! Starboard E-motor stop! Shift over! Starboard engine forward slow!”
The Chief stands up, wriggles his shoulders, stretches, and looks quizzically at me. “Well?”
I nod submissively and, like a defeated boxer, sink down on the sack of potatoes leaning against the chart table. The Chief seizes a handful of prunes from the chest that stands open for everyone beside the table, and holds them out to me. “Spiritual refreshment! Yes, we’re not exactly your simple, straightforward kind of boat.”
When the Old Man has disappeared, the Chief says quietly, “Things are going to stay lively today. ‘Working the weariness out of dissipated bones!’ is what the Old Man calls it. Nothing gets past him. He has his eye on everyone. All we need is a single mistake and we’ll be in for one exercise after the other.”
On its table under a thick celluloid cover lies the sea chart. At present it’s still a blank, showing only the edges of the coasts. The land masses behind the coasts are empty, as though uninhabited; no roads, no towns. A sea chart. What’s behind the coasts has no meaning for the seafarer. At most a few landmarks and the designated lighthouses. On the other hand, all shoals and sandbars near the entrance to rivers are here. A zigzag pencil line extends from Saint Nazaire. There is a cross on it—our last bearing.
Our general course is three hundred degrees, but I keep hearing orders to the helmsman. Danger from enemy submarines still keeps us from steering a straight course.
In the control room an off-duty member of the watch is talking with Turbo, the assistant, who preserved his reddish beard while the boat was in harbor and now looks like an imitation Viking. “Wonder where we’re off to this time.”
“Looks like Iceland!”
“Naw, I bet on the south! A long southern patrol. Look at all the stuff we took on board.”
“That doesn’t mean a damn thing. And why should we care anyway? There’s no getting ashore for a quick lay whichever way we go.”
Turbo has been aboard a long time. With the blasé manner of a man of experience, he draws down the corners of his mouth, half hidden under his tangle of beard, taps the other man indulgently on the shoulder, and explains to him, “Cape Hatteras in the moonlight—Iceland in the fog—you certainly see the world when you’re in the Navy.”
Before the evening meal the Commander orders a trial deep dive.
He wants to find out whether the outboard plugs will hold at greater depths.
The VII-C boats have been approved for a depth of three hundred feet. But because the effect of depth charges decreases the deeper they are when they explode (the denser water reduces the impact of the pressure wave), the boats must often go below three hundred to escape pursuit. To what depth the pressure hull can really hold out—I.e., what the maximum diving depth is—who knows? Men who have gone very deep can never be sure they’ve actually reached the extreme limit. And a crew only finds out once at what depth its boat cracks.
The afternoon’s series of diving commands is repeated. But we don’t reach equilibrium at ninety; instead we go deeper and deeper. The boat is as quiet as a mouse.
Suddenly a sharp screeching, a frightening, ear-splitting sound. I catch alarmed looks, but the Old Man makes no move to stop the oblique downward motion.
The manometer needle stands at five hundred. Again the shrieking, combined with dull, scraping sounds.
“Not exactly an ideal spot here,” murmurs the Chief. He has sucked in his cheeks and glances expressively at the Commander.
“The boat has to be able to take it,” says the Old Man laconically. Then I realize the boat is scraping over rocks on the bottom.
“Purely a matter of nerves,” whispers the Chief.
The ghastly sound continues.
“The pressure hull will hold up all right… But the screws and rudder…” the Chief complains in a mutter. The Old Man seems to be deaf.
Thank god—the screeching and scraping stop. The Chief’s face is gray.
“Sounded exactly like a streetcar on a curve,” says the Second Watch Officer. The Old Man’s manner is that of a benevolent pastor as he explains to me, “In the water noises are magnified five times. Makes a great racket, but doesn’t mean much.”
The Chief gulps in air as if he’d just been saved from drowning. The Old Man looks at him like an interested psychiatrist, then announces, “That’s enough for today. Surface!”
The litany of orders for the surfacing maneuver is run through. The hand of the depth manometer moves backward over the dial.
The Commander and the watcti go above. I follow them and take up a position behind the bridge enclosure in the “greenhouse.” There is plenty of space around the four anti-aircraft guns. I can look straight through and down between the crossbars of the greenhouse railing. Although we’re traveling at cruising speed, the water foams and swirls violently. Myriads of white bubbles stream up, strips of foam interweave only to disperse again. I feel entirely alone. Isolated on an iron raft. The wind presses against me, the iron vibrates with minute oscillations. New patterns drift by constantly. I have to tear my eyes away to keep from dozing off.
Suddenly behind my back I hear the deep drawling voice of the Old Man. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Then follows his usual bear dance. “Stretching his legs,” he calls it.
I squint at the sinking sun, which has broken through a hole in the clouds.
“A pleasure cruise in the middle of the war! W
hat more could a man ask!”
He stares at the foreship and says, “The most seaworthy ship there is—with the greatest radius of action.”
Then we both look astern over the waves.
“Tsch—our wake! A pretty illustration of mortality: you’re still watching—and it’s gone!”
I don’t dare look at him. “Philosophical hot air,” is what he would call this kind of profundity if he heard it from anyone else. But he goes on to spin the thread further. “Even Mother Earth is a little more considerate; at least she allows us the illusion.”
I press my tongue against my front teeth and hiss softly.
But the Old Man won’t be put off. “Perfectly clear. She allows us the illusion that we’ve immortalized ourselves on her—engraved records, erected monuments. All she’s doing is giving herself a little more time than the sea does to level things out again. A couple of thousand years if necessary.
“The Navy’s famous clarity strikes again!” is all I can find to say, embarrassed.
“That’s the way it is,” says the Old Man, grinning straight into my face.
My first night aboard: I try to go limp, to extinguish all thought. Waves of sleep finally reach me, draw me away for a while, but before I can settle down properly they reject me again. Am I asleep or awake? The heat. The stench of oil. The whole boat quivers with a thin vibration: the engines communicate their rhythm to the smallest rivet.
The diesels run all night. Every change of watch startles me wide awake. Each time the hatch opens or is slammed shut in its frame, I’m dragged back from the verge of unconsciousness.
It’s very different from awakening on a conventional ship. Instead of the ocean foaming beyond a porthole, there is only harsh electric light.
Heavy-headed, lead in my skull from the engine fumes. For half an hour now deafening radio music has been rasping at my nerves.
Beneath me I see two bent backs, but no place to put my dangling foot. If I were to get out of my bunk now, I would have to step between the half-finished food and the scraps of white bread turning to mush in puddles of coffee. The whole table is a slimy mess. The sight of pale-yellow scrambled eggs makes my gorge rise.
From the engine room comes the stench of lubricating oil.
“Dammit, man, get that hatch shut!”
Hinrich, the radioman, looks despairingly at the ceiling. When he discovers me, he stares, his eyes still gummed half shut, as though I were an apparition.
“Give us another shot of that coffee from the clap hypo,” says the E-mate Pilgrim.
Clearly I should have got out of my bunk earlier. I can’t trample through their breakfast now, so I let myself sink back and listen. “Come on, get your fat ass out of there!”
“Like baby shit, these scrambled eggs! I can’t stand the smell of this powdered stuff!”
“Want to keep hens in the control room?”
The thought of chickens—white leghorns—in the control room nesting on the trim-valve controls cheers me up. I conjure up a vivid picture of their greenish-white muck smeared on the floor plates amid clotted chicken feathers, and I can hear their silly cackling in my ears. As a child I hated to touch chickens. I can’t stand them now either. The smell of boiled chicken feathers—the pale yellow skin—the fatty pope’s nose.
The loudspeaker thunders through the boat, “I am Lilli, your Lilli from Najanka. That’s in the Cameroon, right on the Tanka…”
The loudspeaker can be turned down a little, but it can’t be turned off since it’s also used to transmit commands. So we have to acquiesce to the whims of the radioman or his assistant, who selects the records in his shack. “Lilh” seems to have caught the assistant’s fancy. He’s playing it for the second time this morning.
I shudder at the realization that it’s really only between four and five am. But to avoid the process of conversion in radio communications, we operate on German summer time. Besides, we are now so far west of the prime meridian that between the sun time of our position and the time shown by our clocks there must be more than another hour’s difference. Essentially it doesn’t matter when we set the beginning of the day. The electric light is on twenty-four hours, and the changing of the watches occurs at intervals that have nothing to do with the time of day.
It’s time to drag myself out of the covers. I say “Excuse me,” and force one foot between the two men who are squatting on the bunk below.
“All good things come from above!” I hear Pilgrim say.
While I search for my shoes, which I thought I had safely jammed behind two pipes, I carry on a morning chat with the control-room mate, who is sitting close beside me on a folding chair.
“Well, how does it look?”
“Comme ci, comme ça, Herr Lieutenant!”
“Barometer?”
“Rising.”
I thoughtfully scratch the fluff from the wool blankets out of the stubble on my face. The comb I run over my head turns black immediately—my hair catches the particles in the oil fumes like a filter.
From my locker I dig out a washcloth and soap. I would like to wash in the forward head, but a quick glance through the circular hatch tells me that’s impossible at the moment: the red light is on. So I simply wipe my eyes and stow the washcloth and soap in my trouser pocket for the time being.
The light signal was rigged up by the Chief. It goes on as soon as the latch on the inside is turned to “Occupied.” One of the nice inventions that reduce wear and tear, for now no one needs to work his way in uncertainty along the narrow gangway from one end of the boat to the other, only to be brought up short in front of a locked door.
As I leave the wardroom I hear Pilgrim croon, “The morning shit comes soon or late, although till evening you may wait,” and immediately there is a rumbling in my belly. I apply the Coué method: “There is no rumbling in my belly. In my belly there is peace. In my belly there is quiet and serenity!”
The Chief comes in from his morning visit to the engine room, his hands oily. The First Watch Officer is nowhere to be seen, nor is the Second Engineer. The Commander is probably washing. The Second Watch Officer is still on duty.
The cook had been wakened at 06.00. Along with the pale scrambled eggs that come to the table cold, there is bread, butter, and black coffee called “nigger sweat.” Against this brew my stomach protests violently; the cramping and rumbling in my gut get worse. I take a quick look to see whether Cabin H is finally free.
“Don’t you like it?” the Chief inquires.
“I don’t know—it isn’t exactly a taste thrill.”
“You ought to try brushing your teeth first, then perhaps it’ll taste better,” the Chief advises, chewing with both cheeks stuffed. The Commander comes out of his cubbyhole with toothpaste spattered on his cheek and his beard darkened with moisture. He says, “Good morning to you, unwashed heroes of the sea,” edges himself into his corner, and stares into space.
No one dares say a word.
Finally he asks for the code word of the day.
“Procul negotiis,” the Chief proposes and translates immediately, so as not to show anyone up, “Far from business cares.”
The Commander nods. “Education, education—excellent!”
The loudspeaker blares a torch song.
Now the heavy morning traffic has started up. Every few minutes someone forces his way through the Officers’ Mess. Since I sit on my folding chair in the middle of the gangway I have to get up each time. My guts are now in upheaval. Dammit! When will the idiot in there finally come out?
The whole thing would be no problem if demand for the head were evenly spaced. If there were no rush hour like this morning. Midnight is just as bad, because the watch from the bridge and the watch from the engine room go off duty simultaneously. Eight people then want to use it at the same time. Last night, two of the men still waiting in the control room were doubled up as though they’d been kicked in the belly.
At last the door to Cabin H opens. The First
Watch Officer! I snatch my things and almost tear the door out of his hand. Over the tiny wash basin in Cabin H there is even a faucet for fresh water. It isn’t running, but in any case it’s only to be used for brushing teeth and a cat’s lick with a washcloth. I can use the salt-water tap and manage to achieve a sort of half lather with the salt-water soap provided, but I can’t make myself gargle with the briny water. When I turn up again in the Officer’s Mess everyone is still sitting around the table in silence, following the Commander’s example.
From the loudspeaker a melting voice inquires, “Do you love me? It was only yesterday that you said no…”
The Chief sighs audibly and rolls his eyes.
I take a large swallow of coffee and swirl it back and forth until it’s foaming, force the brown liquid through the narrow openings between my teeth, let it gurgle through a gap, and shoot it from my right cheek into the left until all the encrusted spittle and deposits are washed away—then I swallow. Ah! Now I can breathe better through my mouth. Next a deep breath through my nose. My throat and respiratory tract are clear. The coffee tastes better too. The Chief was right.
After breakfast the Commander goes to work on the ship’s log with undisguised reluctance. He announces special instruction for the petty officers an hour later. The Chief disappears aft again, the First Watch Officer busies himself with some kind of paper work.
The steward comes to clear away: ship’s routine.
On my way aft I pass through the control room, and the round opening of the tower hatch is still filled with black night. The air coming in from above is cold and damp. Let’s go, I say to myself, and put my left foot on the aluminum ladder, although I don’t feel the slightest desire to go on deck. Now the right leg!
I’m at the level of the helmsman, who is sitting bent over his dimly lit dials in the tower.
“Permission to come onto the bridge?”
“Cranted!” The voice of the Second Watch Officer.
I push my head over the rim and politely say good morning.
Das Boot Page 8